Download or read book The Strange Death of Soviet Communism written by Nikolas K. Gvosdev and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collapse of communism marked the close of an era of world history. What took place in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1991, in the eyes of its proponents, constituted a "great experiment" in the application of new modes of organization to social life, the largest such experiment in history. The Strange Death of Soviet Communism, which first appeared as a special issue of The National Interest, brings together leading scholars of Soviet history, who show why the experiment failed and how it has destroyed the laboratory of socialist utopias.Francis Fukuyama considers the role of long-term social and intellectual modernization while Vladimir Kontorovich examines the related factor of economic stagnation. Myron Rush then analyzes the accidental and precedent-breaking accession and leadership of Gorbachev. Charles Fairbanks looks at the more general factors of change and rigidity within communist political culture. Chapters by Peter Reddaway and Stephen Sestanovich conclude this section by assessing respectively the role of internal pressure from Soviet citizens and external pressure from the West. The next chapters deal with why the West was surprised by the communist collapse. This involves a critique of Western Sovietology both for its scholarly failures and its ideological prejudices. Here, Peter Rutland and William Odom deal with social science interpretations of the Soviet Union while Robert Conquest and Richard Pipes reflect on historians' readings of Soviet history. Martin Malia then offers a comparative assessment of both. In the third section Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer discuss communism in relation to the intellectuals in the West.Although the authors are united in their anti-communist stance, the volume is diverse in its perspectives and assessments of Soviet communism. Taken together, these contributions show that the debate on the legacy of communism and a subsequent rethinking of modern history is just beginnin

Download or read book The Strange Death of Marxism written by Paul Edward Gottfried and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2005-09-08 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Strange Death of Marxism seeks to refute certain misconceptions about the current European Left and its relation to Marxist and Marxist-Leninist parties that existed in the recent past. Among the misconceptions that the book treats critically and in detail is that the Post-Marxist Left (a term the book uses to describe this phenomenon) springs from a distinctly Marxist tradition of thought and that it represents an unqualified rejection of American capitalist values and practices. Three distinctive features of the book are the attempts to dissociate the present European Left from Marxism, the presentation of this Left as something that developed independently of the fall of the Soviet empire, and the emphasis on the specifically American roots of the European Left. Gottfried examines the multicultural orientation of this Left and concludes that it has little or nothing to do with Marxism as an economic-historical theory. It does, however, owe a great deal to American social engineering and pluralist ideology and to the spread of American thought and political culture to Europe. American culture and American political reform have foreshadowed related developments in Europe by years or even whole decades. Contrary to the impression that the United States has taken antibourgeois attitudes from Europeans, the author argues exactly the opposite. Since the end of World War II, Europe has lived in the shadow of an American empire that has affected the Old World, including its self-described anti-Americans. Gottfried believes that this influence goes back to who reads or watches whom more than to economic and military disparities. It is the awareness of American cultural as well as material dominance that fuels the anti-Americanism that is particularly strong on the European Left. That part of the European spectrum has, however, reproduced in a more extreme form what began as an American leap into multiculturalism. Hostility toward America, however, can be transformed quickly into extreme affection for the United States, which occurred during the Clinton administration and during the international efforts to bring a multicultural society to the Balkans. Clearly written and well conceived, The Strange Death of Marxism will be of special interest to political scientists, historians of contemporary Europe, and those critical of multicultural trends, particularly among Euro-American conservatives.

Download or read book The Black Book of Communism written by Stéphane Courtois and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 920 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the accomplishments of communism around the world. The book is the first attempt to catalogue and analyse the crimes of communism over 70 years.

Download or read book Stalin s Curse written by Robert Gellately and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chilling, riveting account based on newly released Russian documentation that reveals Joseph Stalin’s true motives—and the extent of his enduring commitment to expanding the Soviet empire—during the years in which he seemingly collaborated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the capitalist West. At the Big Three conferences of World War II, Joseph Stalin persuasively played the role of a great world leader, whose primary concerns lay in international strategy and power politics, and not communist ideology. Now, using recently uncovered documents, Robert Gellately conclusively shows that, in fact, the dictator was biding his time, determined to establish Communist regimes across Europe and beyond. His actions during those years—and the poorly calculated responses to them from the West—set in motion what would eventually become the Cold War. Exciting, deeply engaging, and shrewdly perceptive, Stalin’s Curse is an unprecedented revelation of the sinister machinations of Stalin’s Kremlin.

Download or read book Lethal Politics written by R. J. Rummel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there are estimates of the number of people killed by Soviet authorities during particular episodes or campaigns, until now, no one has tried to calculate the complete human toll of Soviet genocides and mass murders since the revolution of 1917. Here, R. J. Rummel lists and analyzes hundreds of published estimates, presenting them in the historical context in which they occurred. His shocking conclusion is that, conservatively calculated, 61,911,000 people were systematically killed by the Communist regime from 1917 to 1987.Rummel divides the published estimates on which he bases his conclusions into eight historical periods, such as the Civil War, collectivization, and World War II. The estimates are further divided into agents of death, such as terrorism, deportations, and famine. Using statistical principles developed from more than 25 years of quantitative research on nations, he analyzes the estimates. In the collectivization period, for example, about 11,440,000 people were murdered. During World War II, while the Soviet Union had lost almost 20,000,000 in the war, the Party was killing even more of its citizens and foreigners-probably an additional 13,053,000. For each period, he defines, counts, and totals the sources of death. He shows that Soviet forced labor camps were the major engine of death, probably killing 39,464,000 prisoners overall.To give meaning and depth to these figures, Rummel compares them to the death toll from'major wars, world disasters, global genocide, deaths from cancer and other diseases, and the like. In these and other ways, Rummel goes well beyond the bare bones of statistical analysis and tries to provide understanding of this incredible toll of human lives. Why were these people killed? What was the political and social context? How can we understand it? These and other questions are addressed in a compelling historical narrative.This definitive book will be of interest to Soviet experts, those inte

Download or read book The Strange Death of Soviet Communism written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Strange Death of American Liberalism written by H. W. Brands and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative book, H. W. Brands confronts the vital question of why an ever-increasing number of Americans do not trust the federal government to improve their lives and to heal major social ills. How is it that government has come to be seen as the source of many of our problems, rather than the potential means of their solution? How has the word liberal become a term of abuse in American political discourse? From the Revolution on, argues Brands, Americans have been chronically skeptical of their government. This book succinctly traces this skepticism, demonstrating that it is only during periods of war that Americans have set aside their distrust and looked to their government to defend them. The Cold War, Brands shows, created an extended--and historically anomalous--period of dependence, thereby allowing for the massive expansion of the American welfare state. Since the 1970s, and the devastating blow dealt to Cold War ideology by America's defeat in Vietnam, Americans have returned to their characteristic distrust of government. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Brands contends, the fate of American liberalism was sealed--and we continue to live with the consequences of its demise.

Download or read book The Strange Death of Europe written by Douglas Murray and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER A WATERSTONES POLITICS PAPERBACK OF THE YEAR, 2018 The Strange Death of Europe is a highly personal account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Declining birth-rates, mass immigration and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive change as a society. This book is not only an analysis of demographic and political realities, but also an eyewitness account of a continent in self-destruct mode. It includes reporting from across the entire continent, from the places where migrants land to the places they end up, from the people who appear to welcome them in to the places which cannot accept them. Told from this first-hand perspective, and backed with impressive research and evidence, the book addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel's U-turn on migration, the lack of repatriation and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, Lampedusa and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away. In each chapter he also takes a step back to look at the bigger issues which lie behind a continent's death-wish, answering the question of why anyone, let alone an entire civilisation, would do this to themselves? He ends with two visions of Europe – one hopeful, one pessimistic – which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next.

Download or read book Collapse written by Vladislav M. Zubok and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.

Download or read book Dead Again written by Masha Gessen and published by Verso. This book was released on 1997-06-17 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author examines "the ways in which intellectuals are finding an identity in the new Russia."--Cover.

Download or read book Red Plenty written by Francis Spufford and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Spufford cunningly maps out a literary genre of his own . . . Freewheeling and fabulous." —The Times (London) Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending. Red Plenty is history, it's fiction, it's as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant, and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.

Download or read book Collision and Collusion written by Janine R. Wedel and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Soviet Union's communist empire collapsed in 1989, a mood of euphoria took hold in the West and in Eastern Europe. The West had won the ultimate victory--it had driven a silver stake through the heart of Communism. Its next planned step was to help the nations of Eastern Europe to reconstruct themselves as democratic, free-market states, and full partners in the First World Order. But that, as Janine Wedel reveals in this gripping volume, was before Western governments set their poorly conceived programs in motion. Collision and Collusion tells the bizarre and sometimes scandalous story of Western governments' attempts to aid the former Soviet block. He shows how by mid-decade, Western aid policies had often backfired, effectively discouraging market reforms and exasperating electorates who, remarkably, had voted back in the previously despised Communists. Collision and Collusion is the first book to explain where the Western dollars intended to aid Eastern Europe went, and why they did so little to help. Taking a hard look at the bureaucrats, politicians, and consultants who worked to set up Western economic and political systems in Eastern Europe, the book details the extraordinary costs of institutional ignorance, cultural misunderstanding, and unrealistic expectations.

Download or read book The Strange Death of Soviet Communism written by Nikolas K. Gvosdev and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The collapse of communism marked the close of an era of world history. What took place in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1991, in the eyes of its proponents, constituted a "great experiment" in the application of new modes of organization to social life, the largest such experiment in history. The Strange Death of Soviet Communism, which first appeared as a special issue of The National Interest, brings together leading scholars of Soviet history, who show why the experiment failed and how it has destroyed the laboratory of socialist utopias.Francis Fukuyama considers the role of long-term social and intellectual modernization while Vladimir Kontorovich examines the related factor of economic stagnation. Myron Rush then analyzes the accidental and precedent-breaking accession and leadership of Gorbachev. Charles Fairbanks looks at the more general factors of change and rigidity within communist political culture. Chapters by Peter Reddaway and Stephen Sestanovich conclude this section by assessing respectively the role of internal pressure from Soviet citizens and external pressure from the West. The next chapters deal with why the West was surprised by the communist collapse. This involves a critique of Western Sovietology both for its scholarly failures and its ideological prejudices. Here, Peter Rutland and William Odom deal with social science interpretations of the Soviet Union while Robert Conquest and Richard Pipes reflect on historians' readings of Soviet history. Martin Malia then offers a comparative assessment of both. In the third section Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer discuss communism in relation to the intellectuals in the West.Although the authors are united in their anti-communist stance, the volume is diverse in its perspectives and assessments of Soviet communism. Taken together, these contributions show that the debate on the legacy of communism and a subsequent rethinking of modern history is just beginnin"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Political Will and Personal Belief written by Paul Hollander and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 signaled the demise of a political and economic system that was widely perceived as durable, the preeminent rival to that of the United States. Less conspicuous than the momentous political transformations were the altered beliefs, aspirations, and illusions of the individuals who had maintained and led that system. In this original interpretation the eminent sociologist Paul Hollander focuses on the human aspects of the failure of Soviet communism. He examines how members of the Soviet political elite, leaders in communist Czechoslovakia and Hungary, high-ranking officials in agencies of control and coercion, and distinguished defectors and exiles experienced the erosion of ideals that undermined the political system they had once believed in.Hollander analyzes an array of autobiographical and biographical writings, journalistic accounts, and scholarly interpretations of the unraveling of Soviet communism. The Soviet Union fell apart not merely because of severe economic shortcomings, Hollander argues, but because of the double impact of the conflict between official ideals and practical realities and an eroding sense of legitimacy in the highest echelons. In his conclusion, the author considers how Marxist theory both shaped and undermined the system.

Download or read book The Russian Job written by Douglas Smith and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning historian reveals the harrowing, little-known story of an American effort to save the newly formed Soviet Union from disaster After decades of the Cold War and renewed tensions, in the wake of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, cooperation between the United States and Russia seems impossible to imagine—and yet, as Douglas Smith reveals, it has a forgotten but astonishing historical precedent. In 1921, facing one of the worst famines in history, the new Soviet government under Vladimir Lenin invited the American Relief Administration, Herbert Hoover’s brainchild, to save communist Russia from ruin. For two years, a small, daring band of Americans fed more than ten million men, women, and children across a million square miles of territory. It was the largest humanitarian operation in history—preventing the loss of countless lives, social unrest on a massive scale, and, quite possibly, the collapse of the communist state. Now, almost a hundred years later, few in either America or Russia have heard of the ARA. The Soviet government quickly began to erase the memory of American charity. In America, fanatical anti-communism would eclipse this historic cooperation with the Soviet Union. Smith resurrects the American relief mission from obscurity, taking the reader on an unforgettable journey from the heights of human altruism to the depths of human depravity. The story of the ARA is filled with political intrigue, espionage, the clash of ideologies, violence, adventure, and romance, and features some of the great historical figures of the twentieth century. In a time of cynicism and despair about the world’s ability to confront international crises, The Russian Job is a riveting account of a cooperative effort unmatched before or since.

Download or read book Roads to the Temple written by Leon Aron and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-13 with total page 746 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leon Aron considers the “mystery of the Soviet collapse” and finds answers in the intellectual and moral self-scrutiny of glasnost that brought about a profound shift in values. Reviewing the entire output of the key glasnost outlets in 1987-1991, he elucidates and documents key themes in this national soul-searching and the “ultimate” questions that sparked moral awakening of a great nation: “Who are we? How do we live honorably? What is a dignified relationship between man and state? How do we atone for the moral breakdown of Stalinism?” Contributing both to the theory of revolutions and history of ideas, Aron presents a thorough and original narrative about new ideas’ dissemination through the various media of the former Soviet Union. Aron shows how, reaching every corner of the nation, these ideas destroyed the moral foundation of the Soviet state, de-legitimized it and made its collapse inevitable.

Download or read book The Strange Death of David Kelly written by Norman Baker and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2024-11-19 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Anyone can commit a murder, but it takes an artist to commit a suicide." – Old KGB saying The high-profile death of government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly twenty-one years ago, amid the tumult of Britain's controversial invasion of Iraq, plunged the New Labour government into crisis and led to the resignation of the BBC's director general. An informal inquiry chaired by Lord Hutton into the circumstances surrounding Kelly's death cleared the government of wrongdoing but was widely dismissed as a whitewash. The Strange Death of David Kelly argues that neither the medical evidence nor David Kelly's state of mind and personality supported the verdict of suicide. Analysing the official process instigated after Kelly's death, putting the entire episode into its political context and scrutinising the actions of the government in launching the Iraq War, this new edition of the instant bestseller is fully updated to include the latest evidence and theories surrounding this most mysterious and political of deaths.